Kemba Walker goes for a layup during last night's game against Delaware State.

Huskies speed up to a win

No. 2 UConn uses fast break to bury Hornets

By: Kevin Duffy

Posted: 12/2/08

Delaware State came into Monday's game against No. 2 UConn with the intention of slowing the pace and executing in the half-court.

UConn came in with the intention of pressing and speeding the game up. Something had to give - and it did.

The Huskies (7-0) employed a full-court press from the opening tip and turned 13 first-half Delaware State (1-9) turnovers into 18 points en route to a 44-18 halftime lead that they would not relinquish. Though sloppy at times in the second half, the Huskies cruised to a 79-49 victory Monday night at Gampel Pavilion.

"I like defensively what we did in the first half," said coach Jim Calhoun. "We just had letdown periods in the second half … it's a difficult game to play in when you're up 25 and the team runs the shot-clock for 28 seconds."

Calhoun also noted that without UConn's suffocating ball pressure in the first half, the Huskies would have been lucky to score 30 points instead of the 44 that they put up.

Offensively, UConn benefited from a balanced scoring attack that saw four players - Jeff Adrien, Hasheem Thabeet, Gavin Edwards and Jerome Dyson - reach double-figures. Edwards led the way with a career-high 17 points.

"He has that energy coming off the bench," Dyson said. "He's always running the floor, he always has so much enthusiasm coming off the bench. He just likes to play."

Thabeet scored 10 points, six of which came off dunks and four off free throws. Thabeet has not scored a field goal that wasn't a dunk in his past two games. The 7-foot-3 junior also pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds and dominated an undersized team -Delaware State's tallest player was just 6-foot-7 - that was without its leading rebounder, Arturo Dubois.

Delaware State kept itself in the game early on-the Hornets trailed by three points eight minutes into first half-behind the outside shooting of 6-foot-4 senior shooting guard Donald Johnson, who nailed four 3-pointers and totaled 16 points in the opening period.

Johnson wasn't done there. On Delaware State's first possession of the second half, he buried another open 3-pointer, prompting Calhoun to burn a timeout, which he spent standing on the court with his back faced to his team.

Apparently, the Huskies took the hint. Dyson shadowed Johnson wherever he went for the remainder of the game and limited the Delaware State guard to just six points the rest of the way.

And on the rare occasions that Dyson wasn't in Johnson's face, Thabeet was. The nation's second leading shotblocker sent a Johnson 3-point attempt into the fifth row with 12:06 remaining in the second half to register his fourth and final block of the game.

"He was making everything, so we needed to stop that," Thabeet said. "Everytime he made a shot the coaches called timeout and were yelling at us, so we needed to do a better job against him."

While Johnson finished 6-for-11 from 3-point land, the Huskies were equally successful as a team. UConn drilled six of its 14 long-range attempts throughout the game. Dyson, A.J. Price, Craig Austrie and Kemba Walker each hit one and freshman Scottie Haralson made two, including a bank-shot with 1:34 remaining in the game. Haralson has converted on his last three attempts from beyond the arc and has quickly become a fan favorite among the UConn student section.

"It gives me a lot of confidence that the crowd is behind me," Haralson said. "I just need to come out and stay relaxed and just keep playing ball."